


Gumshoe Tango

by Azzandra



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 22:04:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You first meet Terezi Pyrope while you are working the Lalonde case.</p><p>Though it's probably more accurate to say you get acquainted with her cane first. She trips you on your way escorting Miss Lalonde out of the police station.</p><p>“Watch where you're going!” the troll chides, a wide grin stretching her face. “Don't you know it's rude to step on the blind?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gumshoe Tango

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phantasmalreality](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantasmalreality/gifts).



You first meet Terezi Pyrope while you are working the Lalonde case.

Though it's probably more accurate to say you get acquainted with her cane first. She trips you on your way escorting Miss Lalonde out of the police station.

“Watch where you're going!” the troll chides, a wide grin stretching her face. “Don't you know it's rude to step on the blind?”

“Ah,” you say, as the pieces fall into place, “you're Detective-Inspector Pyrope! Your reputation precedes you.”

“It's much like my cane, in that regard,” Pyrope replies, still with that unsettling wide grin.

You get the feeling that she's displeased you've come to extricate her main suspect. She can displease herself into an aneurysm, as far as you're concerned. Rose Lalonde is innocent and Detective-Inspector Pyrope can stick it.

“It certainly must _trip people up_ ,” you say, “that you've managed to climb through the ranks so quickly.”

A slight twitch disrupts her grin.

“Why, Miss Crocker!” Pyrope says, leaning forward and flaring her nostrils like she's something a few rungs higher than you on the food chain and she's just caught your scent. “You are deliciously despicable and I shall enjoy trampling you as you do the disabled!”

You don't let her see how confused you are by that bizarre remark, and opt to gently guide Miss Lalonde away and out of the police station.

“You've done it now, Miss Crocker,” Miss Lalonde says as she gives you a sidelong glance. “I'd say you've bitten off more than you can chew, but I think we know who's going to end up getting chewed up and spat out like cheap tobacco into the spittoon of ill-advised interspecies quadrant entanglements.”

“Isn't your fiancée a troll?” you ask, rather more testy than you intend.

Rose Lalonde gives you a delicate little lady-like smile that you don't believe is genuine for a second.

“Kanaya prefers cigarettes nowadays,” she says, and then waggles her eyebrows in an obscene manner. You herd her off before she can get arrested for public lewdness.

 

* * *

 

Detective-Inspector Pyrope steps into your office, daintily holding a search warrant between two fingers. Her grin is still as sharp as a knife fresh off the whetstone, except now it also has an additional smug quality to it. A smug sharp knife. You don't like the look of that.

“I hope you haven't sorted your underwear drawer anytime recently, Crocker,” she says, “because I've come to turn it inside out!”

You expect the search warrant, of course. Your most recent case involves several compromising documents which a prominent local politician is probably eager to get out of your mits.

You do not expect Pyrope with her cane and her can-do attitude, mostly because you suspect she buys her can-do attitude from a killer squid. She isn't the type to let you see her coming and give you time to abscond.

“Yes, indeed, that is certainly a search warrant you have there, Detective-Inspector,” you reply as you scan the paper. There is no way around it; Pyrope and her officers have every legal right to search both your home and office; quite convenient for them that your office is also located within your home.

They proceed to this task with great aplomb. They don't break anything—you've helped the police on enough cases that you've earned some amount of respect, if not affection—but Pyrope goes around and shifts everything out of place even after some other officer puts it back properly.

You realize she's doing it to annoy you, so you thank her profusely for her help in redecorating, and swear up and down that everything looks even better than before. She gives you a cool smile and tips over an ink bottle. The ink bottle's cap in on, however, so all it does is make a sad thudding sound against your desk.

They don't find the papers, of course. You are not an amateur, and by Pyrope's minimal disappointment, she didn't expect you to be either. You could swear she was just happy to disturb you for a few hours.

She is moments from getting into a police car when you go up to her and lean very close to speak in a low voice.

“I'm sorry you had to leave empty handed, Inspector,” you say. “I guess you should have checked all the underwear, not just the stuff in the drawer. Hoo hoo hoo!”

And you pat your chest where you can feel the papers stuffed into your bra.

Pyrope's nostrils flare, and her face takes on a slightly teal tinge.

“I'll have to be extremely thorough next time,” she says, and leers at you.

 

* * *

 

When Pyrope comes to ask for your help, she does not do so humbly. She doesn't have the constitution for humility, you think.

“Our hands are tied, but I'm sure an enterprising young busybody would just love to sink her teeth into this particularly succulent case,” she says, as she slips you a folder. “Why, you are so enthusiastic about it, you even swiped this file from my desk! Tsk tsk, Crocker! Taking advantage of the blind like that. You should be feeling ample amounts of shame right now.”

By Pyrope standards, she's downright buttering you up. You skim through the file.

It's a nasty business. Some trouble with a cherub. A lot of easily recognizable names attached.

“That's all well and good, Inspector, but unlike you, I don't get my paycheck from the city,” you say.

“No, you get your money from the obscenely bloated trust fund you no doubt possess,” she laughs. “You are a smart woman, Crocker. I'm sure you'll find someone with a checkbook and a suitable amount of gullibility along the way.”

You lace your fingers together and lean your chin on them thoughtfully. You will take the case, yes, but you don't want to make it too easy on her.

“Now, Inspector, you must realize I don't like to accept a case on an empty stomach,” you say. “Dinner is in ten minutes, and it will take you so terribly long for you to convince me. Why don't you come around another day?”

Pyrope's lip twitches—the only sign of her supressed grin—but she knows how time sensitive this case is.

“Set out another plate, then,” she says, because she is not the type to ask permission, even when cornered into it.

 

* * *

 

Dinner turns to drinks in the parlor. She mocks your record collection.

“All these mustachioed men,” she complains as she looks at the covers. “Is that your only criterion for buying music? That it is belched forth from the hirsute maws of dubiously attractive human males?”

It would take too long to explain the childish contest you have going with Dirk Strider and how that has taken a terrible, terrible toll on your music collection. Your one comfort is that you're fairly sure you're winning, by whatever esoteric standards these things can be judged.

“Yes,” you reply solemnly.

You sit in your favorite armchair as she paws through your collection, pulling increasingly displeased faces. You aren't properly drunk, merely a bit lightheaded, and you suspect Pyrope isn't either. She puts on a record that she finds least offensive, giggles, and then flops down into your lap.

It's so unexpected that you almost drop your glass as you jostle to balance her properly on your knees. She emits a shrieking, hysterical laughter as you settle her in a position you judge comfortable for the both of you.

She grows silent after that. Half-turned towards you, she runs her fingers through your hair. Her hand is cold, colder than her blood color can account for, and you wonder if she's nervous.

When she's not constantly grinning or leering or making scary faces, she looks simply like a pensive young woman.

You are going to kiss her. Or perhaps she's going to kiss you. It feels inevitable at the moment. Before you extends an ever diminishing amount of time until the moment you are no longer ignorant of how it feels to kiss Terezi Pyrope.

“You can call me Jane,” you say.

“Yes, that is something I am capable of doing,” she says. Her fingers still card through your hair. It strikes you as more business-like than affectionate, but it feels like tenderness all the same.

You sigh and loop your arms around her waist. She is capable of being difficult all the way to bed. And you suspect she's going to be exactly that. You regret the inevitability of your impending kiss, because now you can't take her by surprise by planting one straight on her lips. It would have been a petty victory, true, but even that is denied to you now.

Her hand leaves your hair. A finger brushes over your lips, and then stops over your chin. She makes a thoughtful noise, as if considering some great conundrum. The anticipation thickens, until you feel yourself leaning towards her, slow as if through molasses.

“Well, it's getting late,” she says overly loud, and jumps out of your lap. “I have a lot of work to do at the station!”

She picks up her cane and walks out of the room so precipitously, that by the time you snap out of your stupor and run after her, she is already at the door.

“Goodnight, Jane,” she says, giving you a grin. And then she's gone, slamming the door shut behind her so hard that plaster falls off the wall.

You are left feeling simultaneously annoyed and strangely compelled by her odd behavior.

You do believe you are being courted.

 

* * *

 

You next cross paths while working on the Ampora case. It seems fairly lurid at first glance. A highblooded socialite whose moirail disappeared suddenly one night. Everyone else seems convinced she did it to escape him, even though Ampora is adamant that isn't the case.

Ampora wails and pleads and rages in your office, and offers you increasingly absurd sums of money to find Feferi Peixes and clear his relatively good name. You take the case, not because Ampora strikes you as particularly innocent (he doesn't, he comes across like he's one waiter spilling wine on his shirt away from a homicidal rampage), but because Miss Peixes herself, from what you know of her from the society papers, does not strike you as the running away type. Especially not from Ampora, who you suspect she's been keeping in line for so long it's become second nature to her. If she decided to run away, she'd certainly not leave any doubt to Ampora that she was running away because of him.

You present these facts to Pyrope when she comes around to arrest Ampora. Her face is impassive; she doesn't contradict you.

“Prove it, then!” she says, in a rickety purr.

You get the feeling this isn't just your usual sort of disagreement, where she has to pursue the law and you have to pursue the truth. She's setting it forth like a challenge. Something in you itches, eager to meet the challenge.

Two days later, when you produce the moirail and relay the complicated tangle of events that led to Miss Peixes ending up in the countryside hospital with a psionic in tow, Pyrope gives you a different sort of smile. She quietly processes Ampora's release, and says nothing more. As victories go, this feels rather disappointing.

Then, as you are leaving the police station, she pulls you into a broom closet. She pins against the shelves of cleaning products and holds you there, kissing you while you squirm breathlessly. It smells like dust and detergent, and tastes like chalk and cherry soda, and it is overwhelming in the best kind of way.

“Go and spend Ampora's ridiculous retainer on something nice for yourself,” Pyrope says afterwards, patting your behind. “Something in a refreshing mountain spring blue, I think! It would really bring out your eyes.”

She gives you one last delicate nip of a kiss on your chin and leaves you, panting and flushed, hanging for dear life onto the shelves of a broom closet.

 

* * *

 

The next time, you set the challenge. A petty criminal, Jack Noir, is harassing one of your clients. You drop hints Pyrope's way that maybe you don't believe she can catch him. They don't call him “Slick” for nothing, you say indulgently, as if you will absolutely forgive her if she can't do it.

She beams at you, a wide ravenous expression that unsettles you in such fascinating ways. It takes her less than a day to get Noir locked up and charged with a list of crimes as long as your forearm. You hear about it through the grapevine, how she took every last criminal establishment by storm, how she gathered up rats and rivals and every petty crook who ever had it in for Noir and set them to the singular purpose of making sure Noir never stepped foot outside prison walls. You hear the criminal world breathed a sigh of relief, possibly through one of the many extra breathing holes Noir gave them throughout the years.

You take her out to a coffee shop to celebrate. You play footsie under the table and end up making out in an alley, halfway to your home.

“I got a booklet of caliginous pick-up lines from a friend the other day,” you tell her as she nibbles along your jawline intently. You nervously eye the mouth of the alley, keeping your voice low.

“Ooh, think you need it?” Terezi asks, momentarily distracted from her task. You regret speaking.

“It can't hurt!” you say.

“Okay, lay one on me.”

You try to recall one of the more clever ones, but out comes “Nice earrings, I hope they fall down a drain.”

“I'm not wearing earrings!” Terezi points out, and you blush.

“Well,” you say, “I'll let it pass just this once.”

She snorts and kisses your mouth. You're sure it's not to shut you up, because you are a brilliant conversationalist.

 

* * *

 

You never do go on regular dates.

She takes you to witness a trial. It's the Alternian kind, where people aren't so much found guilty as eaten whole at the end. Terezi makes disapproving noises whenever the legislacerator makes a mistake. She's doing it loudly enough that the legislacerator has a thin sheen of blue-tinged sweat on her forehead.

You suspect your only purpose here is to be in awe of Terezi's superior expertise. The defendant is so painfully guilty, the fact that this trial isn't over yet is a testimony to a lack of skill on the prosecution's side.

“I'm going to try for my legislacerator license,” Terezi tells you, leaning over to whisper in your ear during the defendant's pleas for mercy.

You feel a twinge of regret—what if you lose your current dynamic? What if she loses interest in you once you're no longer going up against each other?—but you picture her in this setting, making her case, arguing fiercely, and it feels like something she was born for.

 

* * *

 

You take her on a stake-out, stuck together in a car for six hours, with greasy food and a broken radio that only plays a religious music station.

“I don't understand the point,” she says.

“We're to watch if he leaves his apartment and follow him in case he goes to his partner's hideout.”

“No, not that. The ridiculous miniature rug on your face!” Terezi says, pointing an accusing finger to your fake mustache.

“It's a disguise,” you say.

“Yes, I'm sure people will be completely confused about your identity with your upper lip hidden from their sight. Friends of a lifetime will probably pass you by on the street, completely unaware of their oversight! Your own lusus will reel in confusion, and plead tearfully for their ward to be returned to them!”

You laugh, because you recall at least two occasions during which good friends really did pass you by on the street while you were wearing this mustache. You don't know what it is about it, but people don't seem to see anything apart from the mustache. It gives you a sort of invisibility from the attention of smarmy men, and a kind of anonymity that you have often used to your advantage in this line of work.

“I bet I could sell you on it,” you say.

“Hm?”

You lean over with intent.

“Oh no! No, no, no!” she says, waving you away. “You are not touching that disgusting bouquet of filthy liquorish bristles to my face!”

You laugh and spend so much time pretending to go in for a kiss, that you almost miss it when your target leaves the building. It's worth it, though. Later, when you drive Terezi home, she allows you a single kiss.

“Not as bad as I thought,” she admits grudgingly.

 

* * *

 

The first time you come anywhere near to sex, it's in her office. Her door doesn't lock, so she blocks it with a chair. This is just as well, because you've got a hand inside her shirt and she's got a hand up your skirt, and she's latched onto your earlobe with her needle-sharp teeth, keeping you in place as her fingers work in agile patterns.

When someone tries the door, you jump apart suddenly and adjust your clothing with lightning speed.

As you practically run out of the office, you hear her over your shoulder.

“What a strange place to put a chair! I wonder how it got there?”

You're sure she must smell your flushed face all the way down the street, the wretched minx.

 

* * *

 

The second time you get close, it's in your home office. It doesn't get very far either until a new client rushes in demanding to hire you, and in your flustered state you push Terezi inside a cabinet.

 

* * *

 

The third time's the charm. You're wearing a new blue dress for the Mayor's Ball, and Terezi is there as well. You think she might have almost forgotten she was the one who wanted you in blue, until you feel her furtively sniffing along your shoulder.

“Refreshing,” she whispers in your ear, and then sidles away.

Then someone's murdered at the party, and there's an exhilarating race to find the murderer. You find him first, but she figures it out just moments later. She barges in on you just in time to knock his gun out of his hand with her cane, and save you from being shot. You make out as he's being cuffed and hauled away.

You offer Terezi a ride home afterward, but you maybe should have specified that you meant her home, because you end up spending the night and most of the next day at your place.

It never really does get any less exciting than that.

 

* * *

 

She has a sharp tongue, except for when yours is up her nook and her bulge is twined around your fingers; then she's all needy hitches of breath and stuttered purrs. This isn't something you've ever tried with a troll, but it's fairly straight-forward when the anatomy waves at you like it's greeting you across a busy market. _Just go up and shake hands with it, Jane._

Her hand is in your hair, nails dragging along your scalp, softly, cold pinpoints like dagger tips, and it makes you tingle down to the soles of your feet. Somehow, this unravels you even worse than what you're doing to her, and when you raise your head and look at her, she smiles sharply in return, because she knows.

You plunge fingers into her nook, easily with how wet and glistening teal it is, and she arches—it's all for show, you're sure, she's doing it on purpose just to rile you—but she arches her back, breasts up as she passes a hand over them, and makes this prolonged _sound_. Dear god, it's filthy, and it sends a throb through you so hard that you can hear your blood rushing in your ears.

She takes advantage of this momentary weakness, and just like that, she takes the lead. She pushes you down on the bed easily, and you flop like a rag doll. You can feel her bulge, writhing against your inner thigh as she looms over you with her grin and her artfully tousled hair.

She thoughtfully runs a hand over your body, starting from your collar bone and down your chest, all the way to your hip, like she's sizing you up, trying to figure you out. It sends shivers through you.

“I think I'm going to keep you forever, Miss Crocker,” she purrs, voice ragged and breathless.

“And what would be in it for me?” you ask, and pride yourself that you sound like you have yourself better in hand than her.

She doesn't say, but she tilts her hips just so, and her bulge smears a trail between your legs, unexpectedly cold and wet. You feel it like a jolt, and your hips buck reflexively.

“Well, alright, maybe I can be persuaded somehow,” you allow.

 

* * *

 

It's around noon when you finally manage to take a break from your vigorous work-out and call for breakfast. Your butler, Li'l Seb, a large silent behemoth of a man, comes bearing two trays and leaves without saying a word. Terezi is lured out of bed by the smell of food, and puts on a shirt she finds hanging on the back of a chair. It's too large for her, but you don't mind the sight of her saucily exposed shoulder at all.

She sits down at the table and snatches the newspaper from your tray as you pour her coffee.

Terezi cackles suddenly and turns the newspaper around to show you the headline. It appears your escapades the night before made the front page. There's a photo of the two of you making out during the arrest—you can see the foiled criminal in cuffs in the background, glaring at you—and above it, large lettering proclaiming 'Crime Fighting Sweethearts Bust Ball Murderer'.

You snort a short laugh, and she cackles, and everything in this exact moment is perfect.

 

* * *

 

Years later, when you're sitting on a bench in the park and feeding pigeons, you with your eyesight half to gone even with prescription lenses as thick as jar bottoms, and Terezi with her sense of smell not what it used to be, she gives a dry cackle.

“Well played, Crocker, well played,” she says.

She throws her last piece of bread at the pigeons. She manages to bonk one of the birds straight on the head. She cackles again.

“You weren't so bad yourself,” you reply.

After that, you leave the park, tottering away arm in arm like the two indestructible old biddies you are.


End file.
